Also known as Cloning Technology, this 1997 collection brings together various remixes and reinterpretations of Fear Factory songs from their best and most well-known album Demanufacture by various DJs, most notably Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly. Of course, if you dislike various electronic bells and whistles added to your Metal, then you should stay far, far away from this, since the Metal elements are virtually gone. Instead, this is the perfect club soundtrack should you ever decide to take a coachload of Fear Factory fans out on the town, and whilst there's a fairly even line on most remix albums between the poor and the terrible, Remanufacture always surprises me by being quite good. For one, it manages to avoid monotony by changing around the various types of electronic music that it melds the original Fear Factory songs with, so we have Remanufacture as a hardcore techno version of Demanufacture, followed by a laid-back, almost trip-hop National Panel Beating, a version of Body Hammer that puts the riffs all the way to the back and focuses on the electronica - actually working quite well, especially with the added piano.

Obviously, this isn't nearly as good as the original album, and I hardly ever listen to this or the earlier Fear Is The Mindkiller EP, but when I do put it on it usually manages not to annoy. Genetic Blueprint's breakbeat-fuelled version of New Breed especially is fun, reminding me of Skinny Puppy at moments and being pretty catchy to boot - the album overall is good if you enjoy this sort of thing, although little added moments like interlude Bionic Chronic (presumably added in an attempt to make this feel more like an album than a collection of songs) don't really work and would have been better left off. Remanufacture is also about twenty minutes too long for my liking - it would have been easy to cut four or so tracks to streamline and make it at least listenable in one sitting, something I rarely manage and didn't when writing this review.

Yet there's something in all of us that appreciates a few extra beats in our Metal now and then, and this more than fills that hole. Primarily it's for rabid fans of Demanufacture, true, but if you've ever grooved to a track by The Prodigy then chances are that you'll dig Cloning Technology's take on Replica, or Burn's disgustingly danceable remix of Flashpoint. Whether everyone will dig the extreme techno rave of T-1000 (Hunter-Killer) is questionable, of course, and conversely the near-ambient 21st Century Jesus (Pisschrist) may be dull to some, but it reworks the original well and is suitably odd and creepy, as is the following Bound For Forgiveness (A Therapy For Pain). Ultimately, remixes remain for most those annoying bonus tracks at the end of an album which are never as good as the original songs, yet Fear Factory showed great bravery in embracing them from the go, and an album full of remixes is interesting for fans at least.